Being Irina Derevko
by Brigid05
Summary: An old fic from season 2. Just before the events in the Passage episodes, Irina muses about herself, her life, and her attitude toward Jack and Sydney.


**BEING IRINA DEREVKO**

When I was a girl, I used to keep a diary. I did that for many years, until I went off to university and just didn't have time for it anymore. After that I joined the KGB and it became too risky. And I certainly can't do it here.

I was always athletic. In my primary school years, I dreamed of becoming a ballerina; but in Russia there were simply too many who were much more talented than I. Besides, the severely circumscribed movements bored me after a while, and music was never really my forte. Track suited me better. I did that until I finished university. I was even an alternate on the 1968 Olympic team. I still like to run every day, though that, of course, is impossible now. Calisthenics in my cell is the best I can do at the moment.

My father was a structural engineer. I could point out many buildings in Moscow that bear his stamp. All of them are still standing, which is more than one can say for many of the buildings that were built during what you Americans call the "communist era." During the war he was a sniper, and had almost as many confirmed kills as Vassili Zaitsev, though he never became as famous. My mother was a nurse and is credited with personally saving hundreds of lives during the war.

I was still in secondary school when I first came to the attention of the Committee for State Security. You call it the KGB. The standardized tests we all took showed that I had a knack for problem solving, numbers, and spatial reasoning. I had also learned English very easily, and had studied it since primary school. A complex language it is, though I think it is easier in some ways than Russian. A rather stern-looking but friendly middle-aged woman came to our apartment one day when I was 17 and talked with my parents and me. With my talents, she said, I was destined to do great things for the motherland. And the Committee for State Security was very interested in me. They wanted me to study at the University of Moscow and then join them when I finished. They would supervise my studies to be sure I got what I needed there; then my training as an intelligence operative would begin in earnest.

It was to be strictly my choice, she emphasized. I think is it important to point this out now, lest you think that I was in any way coerced into doing what I did. I was not. But who could really refuse an opportunity to attend the University of Moscow -- my father's alma mater, incidentally -- and everything else that went with this offer? Jack had a similar offer from the CIA while he was a freshman at Georgetown University, which he accepted voluntarily. Sydney, though, is a somewhat different case, since she was lied to. Why Jack didn't do a better job of protecting her from Arvin Sloane, I don't know. And how he could think that she would follow him into the CIA when they were barely on speaking terms is beyond me.

I studied literature, mathematics, and languages at the University of Moscow. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about your country. Then I was sent to the Academy to learn marksmanship, self-defense, demolition, encryption, and many other subjects to prepare me for my new career. I even had lessons from a famous actress from what passed for the Moscow theatre scene in those days.

After a year of training, I was given my first assignment: I was to steal aerospace engineering secrets from an unsuspecting American civilian working for Lockheed. This and similar missions were so successful that I was quickly given another -- to learn about a CIA project they had codenamed "Project Christmas," which was designed to identify at an early age children who might make good spies in adulthood. It was being run by a young but very capable officer named Jack Bristow. I was to go to America, become acquainted with him, and discover what I could about Project Christmas. I must have seemed a bit hesitant at first, because they then showed me a picture of him from his CIA file. He was about my age and very handsome with his dark, bushy hair and sharp features. But it was his eyes that really caught my attention. Dark brown and almond-shaped, they almost seemed to leap from the photograph. This could work out very well, I thought.

Marriage wasn't really an integral part of the plan at first, but Jack Bristow quickly became attracted to me. We were introduced at a reception at the Kennedy Center, and soon began dating. He was the perfect gentleman, considerate and well-mannered, with a gentle side that I realized must have been the reason he had been chosen to head a project involving children. We went everywhere -- to concerts, museums, restaurants, and movies; and soon we discovered that we both enjoyed camping. The Berkshires were a favorite spot for us.

At first, Jack was very circumspect about his work, telling me very little about it, to the point where my superiors were becoming concerned. But in time I gained his confidence, and he began to tell me things he should not have done -- would not have done -- if he had known the truth about me. I looked through his things when I could, but that wasn't easy, because he was always scrupulous about following protocol when he took work home.

The information I did glean from him, however, was valuable enough that my superiors told me I should try to get him to propose to me. I told them that should be easy enough -- by that time, it was clear that he had fallen in love with me. He proposed in our favorite Italian restaurant the next Valentine's Day, and afterward we celebrated alone in his apartment. He always was a wonderful lover, and this was one night I especially remember. I would have to be careful, I told myself, and never forget my cover, if this was going to work.

And I didn't. The next 10 years I spent going through his briefcase, planting listening devices in his clothing, and eavesdropping on his phone conversations. I succeeded because I didn't feel the same way about him as he felt about me. He was a charming and devoted husband, but I did not love him. His eyes, though, would haunt me, and do to this day. He looked distinctly unimpressed when I told him on his one and only visit to me that the illusion of our marriage was sometimes as real to me as it was to him, but that was not entirely a lie. Just because I didn't love him didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy our time together. I did -- at times.

Sydney was a mistake from beginning to end. When I told my superiors that I was pregnant, they immediately ordered me to get an abortion. They even found a clinic where I could have it done safely. I should have done it, but I dissuaded them, saying that the information we were getting from "Project Bristow" was too valuable to jeopardize. What if Jack found out? This was the same reason I had stayed faithful to him -- he would have divorced me in a heartbeat if he had discovered that I was cheating on him. Ironically, loyalty was the one thing he ever really asked of me, and the one thing besides love that I couldn't give.

Jack was overjoyed when I told him we were to become parents. I had supposed he wanted a son, but our daughter was the center of his life from the moment she was born. It really was touching. Sydney was a precocious, cheerful child, who had her father's eyes and my cheekbones. Jack also pointed out, with mock horror, that she had inherited his slightly jutting jaw.

Project Christmas ended when word of it got out somehow and the bad publicity forced it to be shut down. It was time for me to go. I returned to Moscow after my death was faked and worked for the KGB as an analyst after that. When it finally folded, I struck out on my own, forming an organization that laundered money, stole weapons, and trafficked in military and industrial intelligence, just as SD-6 and the Alliance does. And is the CIA really so different? You might say that I should have found an honest way to make a living. Don't be so naïve. You try doing that in Russia these days!

After Will Tippin was brought to Taipei, Sydney was the one contacted to make the exchange for the Rambaldi manuscript page and the solution with which to expose it. I knew that she would turn to Jack for help, and was not at all surprised when he showed up. I really didn't expect, however, that we would capture Sydney and her CIA handler. Foolishly, they had destroyed the Rambaldi device. I wasn't entirely sure who had sent them; and when Sydney, stubborn as I remember from her childhood, refused to tell me, I shot her to show her I meant business. If we were going to be forced to take her along, she might as well know whom she was dealing with, I thought. Her partner I left to Khasinau and his ghoulish experiments. I was impressed when she managed to escape. When they tried and failed to get my operations manual in Barcelona, I knew what my next course of action should be.

I turned myself in with that manual as a bargaining chip, though it is not my only one. I have been cooperating with the American government and helping Sydney in order to prove myself. One night after Sydney had left for Madagascar, agents suddenly came to my cell, stood me up, shackled me, and told me I was being transferred to Fort Harris. When I got there, they started interrogating me about explosives planted underneath the house I had told them about. I knew nothing about any explosives, but when it suddenly dawned on me who was behind that, I nearly burst out laughing. Touché, Jack.

I didn't tell them about my suspicions; they would not have believed me anyway. Besides, it wasn't necessary. What did I have to worry about? I knew what Jack would do -- after all, I lived with the man for 10 years. He confessed to what he had done, and has won Sydney back, I suppose. The only time he came to see me, he told me that if I did anything to hurt Sydney, he would kill me. He only wants to protect her. How sweet. How naïve.

Sydney tries to protect herself emotionally from me and to keep her distance, but I am, after all, the mother she has never known, and she can't help but wonder if there isn't in me something of the mother she thought I had been. Some things just aren't meant to be, I guess.

Agent Vaughn is an intriguing case. He no longer fears me as he did at first. Trying to hide the wheel chair on his last visit to me was a nice touch. He is wary enough to try not to reveal his true feelings for Sydney or any of his other weaknesses, but overall he is only moderately good at imitating Jack in that way.

Jack has been doing his best not to let me manipulate him, and is failing miserably. How can he not realize that I know exactly which buttons to push, and that I have been doing just that, even though we have spent a grand total of ten minutes together, if that, since I turned myself in?

Now Agent Kendall has told me that the American government wants me to go on a mission with Jack and Sydney, and that the two of them have agreed to it. This will be interesting, to say the least. This time, Jack will be with me in an environment he cannot completely control; and I am sure that I can continue to use his very distrust of me to my advantage. So now it's off to Kashmir. This ought to be good.


End file.
